French Court Sends Anti-Semite to Prison for Incitement

Related:

One of France’s most vocal anti-Semites, Alain Soral, was sentenced to a year in prison by a criminal court in Paris on Thursday, after he was found guilty of inciting racial hatred in an article that described Jews as “manipulative, domineering and hateful.”

The offending article was published last March on Soral’s playfully-titled Égalité et Réconciliation (“Equality and Reconciliation”) website — an online home for anti-Semitic, extreme nationalist and anti-capitalist activists and writers.

Following the announcement of Soral’s sentence, the French Union of Jewish Students (EUJF) tweeted, “Justice has put a new stop on this little propagandist of hatred.”

Ilana Soskin — a lawyer for the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) — said her organization would continue to pursue Soral, a serial offender, “as soon as he makes anti-Jewish remarks,” the website Le Parisien reported.

Soral’s last court appearance just a month ago left with him with a 4,000 euro fine for publishing an anti-Semitic poster on his website.

Originally a communist, the Swiss-born Soral crossed to the far-right National Front (FN) before carving out his own path in 2007. A purveyor of conspiracy theories about “Jewish” and “Zionist” power, Soral has for several years worked closely with Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, an anti-Semitic propagandist who presents himself as a comedian.

Last September, the pair traveled to North Korea to make an appearance at a “peace festival” in the totalitarian state.